


Way of the Heavenly Fist - Part 5: The Perfect Beat

by Shivaree76



Series: Way of the Heavenly Fist [5]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Beating, Cage Fights, Dominance, Exhibitionism, F/F, Femdom, Fighting, Martial Arts, Mixed Martial Arts, Submission, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 00:18:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14272719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shivaree76/pseuds/Shivaree76
Summary: After months of being haunted by the shadow of defeat, Cassandra has been reunited with the thrill of victory. At her mother's behest, she's joined an underground fight club and thoroughly dominated every opponent thrown at her. But when Lady Shiva requests a personal duel with her in front of the entire club, will Cassandra submit to her ruthless fists once again, or start fighting back? Who will stand, who will fall, and what will be left of them?





	Way of the Heavenly Fist - Part 5: The Perfect Beat

**Author's Note:**

> (Whew, made it! Had a blackout so I was worried I wouldn't get to upload this today. Anyway, I felt the previous chapter had too much talktalktalk, so this one is almost nothing but fightfightfight. And I'm honestly kinda proud of it. Hope you enjoy it! Be here in one week for the thrilling conclusion!)

            The cage rattled and whined with a metallic voice as Cassandra’s opponent was catapulted into its wall by her kick. The Thai kickboxer they’d flown in solely to fight her had done an admirable job of surviving the first round, but had also depleted all his stamina just trying to keep up with her. And as the seconds ticked away on their second round, she could tell he’d begun to shift his strategy, abandoning his early aggressiveness in lieu of turtling up. Over the roaring cheers of the crowd, Cassandra could hear a handful of voices screaming angrily at each other and their hand-picked fighter. Someone stood to lose a lot of money tonight.

            Standing her ground, Cassandra gave the guy a moment to rest as she studied his defense. It was still solid enough, despite the flurry of blows she’d rained on him during the last part of the first round and the opening exchanges of the second, and Cassandra knew that any approach could be met with a sudden knee or kick from him, trying to keep her at a distance. Perhaps he’d try to run the clock, or if he felt particularly courageous, would jump out of the cage like a cornered tiger. That last one excited Cassandra. Reading the man’s body language as he went from confident to cautious and now to almost cowardly had been a depressing experience. Especially considering he actually seemed a bit younger than her. Cassandra held out hope that he still had some of that youthful fire left in him.

            With some slight variations, this had been her routine for the last five weeks, handed to her like homework by her mother. “There is a club in North Point,” Shiva had explained to her, “with a basement used for amateur and underground fights. At least twice a week, you will visit this club and fight whatever opponent they give you. You will defeat them all, without hesitation, until you have accumulated twenty victories. Then, we will meet again.”

            The address was printed in a business card so old and worn-out that Cassandra wondered if the place even still existed. It did, but the tiny bumps under the matte wallpaper and the welding marks that dotted the eight sides of the cage told her it had seen some changes over the years. After a short ID check, the club’s manager, Good-Eye Liu, signed her up right away. It turned out they had a small yet steady roster of female fighters, amateur boxers and martial arts students, who were mostly trotted out as a sideshow every Friday night. The earnings were generous so the girls didn’t mind the hooting and whistling they got every time they stepped into the cage, but one look at Cassandra was enough to tell she was here for more than new shoes money. The silence that fell over the basement that first night, when she stripped to her black and yellow shorts and sports top in front of sixty odd rowdy patrons, combined with the look on her opponent’s face as she took frightening measure of her scarred muscles, still sent a tingle down her spine whenever she remembered it.

            It only took four matches for Liu to ask her, after much humming and hawing, if she’d be up to fight some of their male regulars. Her answer came so swiftly and thoughtlessly, the jittery man needed a couple of seconds to get his bearings in this strange new world that Cassandra had pulled him into, where young battle-worn girls agreed to underground cage matches against trained men with the same careless abandon they showed when picking fast food restaurants. She didn’t even wait for him to tell her about the money. As he jotted her name down on the fight card, Cassandra smiled to herself. This, she decided, must’ve been what other people felt like when talking to her mother. Out of joint.

            The men of the fight club were not so different from the women, at least in spirit. They were crude, rough fighters, some with dreams of going pro while others just liked punching their way to a few rolls of spending money. They had reservations, some respectfully and some not so much, about trading fists with her, all of which evaporated ten seconds into her first mixed match. More opponents soon followed. Two were known Triad enforcers. She enjoyed fighting them, and not exactly for their skill or sportsmanship. Last she heard, they still had two weeks to go before being released from the hospital.

            All in all, she was enjoying herself. Metahuman crime wasn’t nearly as rampant in HK as it was in Gotham, so the fights didn’t clash much with her other nightly activities. Even her urges seemed… not gone, but faded. Almost dormant. Every time she felt that desire to take a hit, to let these men and women work her over a bit, Shiva’s words tugged at her psyche like a leash. Her mother had told her to be invincible, to dominate this arena, and so that’s what she was doing. It’d been an order, plain and simple, and Cassandra saw no reason to question it. Especially not now, on the eve of her twentieth victory. With laser-focused eyes, Cassandra scanned the crowd to see if Shiva was in attendance, watching her from amidst the screaming patrons and frustrated bookies. And for a moment, she thought she caught a glimpse of her, of blood-red lips parted in a wild grin, of silver eyes shining in the dark.

            The moment lasted too long. Like the fussy children acting in school plays that she had seen on TV once or twice, Cassandra kept looking outside the cage for her mother, while inside, the Thai kid saw his chance. A low, hissing sound made her turn her head just in time to take a flying punch that caught her completely off-guard. The big, meaty hit echoed in the basement far louder than it actually hurt, but the sheer surprise of it was enough to put Cassandra on her back. And when she fell, so did a thick veil of silence over the crowd that lasted for two eternal seconds before being shattered by a riotous choir of boos.

            There had been little energy behind the punch. Her opponent had clearly rushed it with little preparation in order to exploit Cassandra’s distraction, so she wasn’t really hurting or anything. Which only made the whole thing smell even fishier than it looked. Resting limply on the ground, Cassandra didn’t even need her Cantonese to understand the accusations of cheating that were roaring all through the basement. Even her opponent seemed startled, either by the success of his blow or his sudden descent from underdog to villain. Probably both. The situation was amusing enough to make Cassandra want to laugh, but Shiva’s words began to burn inside her mind. What if, to her mother’s eyes, being put on her back counted as being defeated?

            With a short breath, Cassandra jumped back to her feet to the rejoicing of her fan club. Holding his hands and one knee up in a mechanical guard, the kickboxer saw through the corners of his fingers how Cassandra catapulted herself towards him and his heart climbed to his throat. His lifted leg extended in a long, front kick to try and keep the beast he’d awakened at bay, but it was useless. By then, Cassandra had already closed the distance, turned around inside his guard, and launched an attack of her own. The two last things the kid felt before blacking out were his foot brushing the side of Cassandra’s butt harmlessly as she jumped into the air, and his solar plexus getting blasted by a side kick that may as well have come out of a shotgun.

            By a knockout at one minute and forty four seconds of the second round, “Kane” reached her twentieth victory. And as the referee raised her hand, a shudder of excitement ran up and down Cassandra’s back when she realized she hadn’t been wrong after all. Somewhere among her adoring public, hidden between the defeated gamblers maybe, she could feel her mother’s gaze on her, her violent intentions permeating the basement.

            With a quick swipe of her tongue, Cassandra licked her lips and was disappointed to find no taste of iron on them. That wasn’t going to last long.

* * *

 

            “Heeey champ! You good? You feelin’ good?” Good-Eye Liu asked, throwing finger guns at Cassandra while she emptied a bottle of water over her head. They’d known each other for over a month now but she could tell there was something about her he’d never been able to get over. There was always a two or three second pause in his otherwise confident manners every time she said a word to him, as if she were speaking a language he was only passingly familiar with.

            “Sure, I’m good,” she said, and started to pull her gloves off with premeditated, almost teasing slowness.

            “Ahh, ahh, hold on,” he interrupted. Cassandra turned to him with patient eyes and the shadow of a smile. “Look, I… I feel like a total asshole for askin’, but, umm… I promise I’ll pay you good! Double, plus what you already got for that Thai dickhead.”

            “What do you want, Liu?”

            “A… a fight,” he admitted, as several drops of sweat began to fall from his messy black hair. “I don’t do this in my club, double-booking like this, but there’s… there’s s-someone here askin’ for ya. Like, specifically. Wants a fight. With you. Street rules. But you don’t have to do it if you’re, like, tired or don’t wanna or…”

            He kept at it for a while. True, he’d mangled her last name on the signing form and her popularity had brought him a fair share of money, but underneath it all, underneath the greed and vague dread, Cassandra could gleam a part of Liu that really cared for her. That, or he was wasting some sizeable acting chops running this fight club.

            “Sure.”

            “… and you know I wouldn’t ask if -- sorry?”

            “Sure. I’ll fight. Barely broke a sweat on the last one.”

            “Well… great. That’s, um,” he stammered, then tried to laugh it off, “that’s great! Ok, take ten -- ten is good? Ten minute break? Yeah?” he asked. Cassandra gave him a thumbs up and he cracked into a nervous grin. “Awesome. Ten minutes, then go back in the cage. I’ll do the intros.”

            Still struggling to keep his cool, Liu gave Cassandra a shaky fist bump and walked up to the locker room door, then turned around to see her fixing her gloves back on with a quiet smile on her face. He was debating in his head what and how much to tell her, but the odd peace emanating from her made him pause just a bit longer than usual.

            “Hey Kane,” he finally called out, “good luck, OK?”

            “Thanks,” Cassandra shot him back, and figured she needed to ask him, if only to avoid suspicion: “So who wants to fight me?”

* * *

 

            “Ladies and gentlemen, all eyes on the cage, please! We have a _very_ special event tonight just for you! She’s only been with us for a few weeks, but the fame of the Tiger Claw Club’s newest fighting machine seems to have travelled far and wide. Just ten minutes ago, our undefeated boxer was challenged by someone in attendance. And since her last fight left much to be desired, she accepted! Welcome once again to the octagon, with a record of twenty wins, eleven of them via knockout, and no losses… the unstoppable, the invincible, the incredible… Kane!”

            Somewhere around her ninth fight, when she made that American karateka tap in half a minute, Cassandra had noticed how loud the cheers around her had grown. It’d been an interesting journey from novelty act, to accusations of fraud, to something of a local heroine. Even the girls she’d fought in those early days had now turned into her most passionate supporters. And although she knew the woman who’d sent her here would most likely scoff at her fan club, Cassandra still found herself raising her gloved fist and giving the crowd a good look at her as she walked around the cage like she owned it.

            “And her opponent… You’ve all heard the stories. The legends. _Twenty-seven_ fighters in _one_ night! Bodies piled so high they reached the roof! Some of you claim to have been there. Some of you even claim to carry the scars of that terrible battle. But tonight, you will _all_ have the privilege of bearing witness to the world’s deadliest fighter in a no-rounds, no-holds-barred, knockout or submission only battle to the end! It is my great, personal honor, to welcome back to the Tiger Claw, for the first time in twenty years… the incomparable, the unforgettable, the goddess of destruction herself… Lady Shiva!”

            There were no cheers for Shiva when she walked into the cage. Those who didn’t know her had nothing to say about the woman in the long, flashy purple longline coat. Those who did, knew there was nothing to say that she wouldn’t demonstrate soon enough. The most she got from the parting crowd was a dim, nervous hush as she made her way through them, and even that was silenced once she stepped inside and calmly bee-lined for Cassandra, as casually as if she were meeting her for dinner. When she drew closer, Cassandra noticed a slight annoyance in her mother’s face that amused her greatly. For once, she had a really good idea of what she was going to say already.

            “Had I known he was going to make such a circus of this, I would have just waited for you outside.”

            “He’s harmless,” Cassandra answered with a small shrug, “and fun.”

            “Right,” Shiva said as she looked around the cage with distant eyes. “The last time I was here, this cage only had four sides.”

            “Times change.”

            “As have you. Except for tonight’s misstep, your mind is clear and your actions pure. Your confidence and focus have returned. And your strength has earned you the adoration of the masses. Once again, you are invincible.”

            “Only because you told me to be,” Cassandra replied, with no resentment in her voice.

            “Nonsense. Your actions are your own. All I did was give you a role, one which suited your nature. It was your decision to follow it.”

            “Ahh, umm, excuse me?” a small voice asked. Shiva turned to Liu, who immediately began shaking hard enough that Cassandra could’ve sworn she felt the vibrations on her wrapped feet. “Are you, uh, actually going to--“

            “Be quiet”, Shiva ordered. Liu obeyed and then some, backing off towards the cage door. A smirk drew on Cassandra’s face, and it was still there when her mother turned back to her. “The lout has a point.”

            “Sometimes, yes.”

            “Will you fight me, ‘Kane’?” Shiva asked as her hands deftly began to undo the buttons on her coat, giving Cassandra a perfect view of the padded black fingerless gloves her mother was wearing. “Will you use every technique in your arsenal to defeat me? Or will you just stand there and allow yourself to be dominated in front of all these people? What will it be, then?”

            Cassandra didn’t think about it. She had no need to. At Shiva’s first question, her spine had stiffened. At the second, her fists had closed. At the third, her inner thighs had shaken a little. The answer, when it finally came, tasted superfluous.

            “I’ll fight you,” she said, “and we’ll see how it goes.”

            Shiva’s face cracked into a wild, shark-like smile that made Cassandra’s heart beat harder and faster than any of her previous twenty fights. Even fighting an actual human shark paled in comparison to seeing her mother take off her coat under the bright silver lights, revealing her exquisitely cut body to a crowd who suddenly became much more appreciative of her. Seeing her standing there, dressed in tight MMA gear not unlike her own save for the red stripes, stretching her flawless arms and long legs, tensing and relaxing those sumptuous muscles of hers until they seemed alive and hungry for combat, Cassandra felt perfectly in tune with the people outside the cage. Shiva’s body was a work of art in motion. A spectacle worth the price of admission alone. And Cassandra bit her lip in lustful anticipation of what she was about to do to her with it.

            “It is clear you have enjoyed being invincible,” her mother said as she raised her hands, her smile shining like a drawn saber, “so I promise to enjoy destroying you.”

* * *

 

            Thick gobs of blood mixed with spit that gave it an odd polished shine flew from Cassandra’s mouth as Shiva snuck a punch inside her faltering guard and twisted her head aside. Before the rich red drops had reached the mat, she was cornered against the cage wall again, her hands scrambling to cover her battered head. Through trembling fingers, Cassandra caught a glimpse of her mother’s face, grinning under the bruises that adorned her features before throwing a huge circular kick aimed low at her exposed ribs. Cassandra lowered her right arm and stiffened up, ready to take the blow and hopefully stay aware enough to hook Shiva’s leg with her hand, steal her balance and take her down to the mat. But while she was still figuring out her game plan, Shiva’s shin suddenly changed directions mid-air with godlike speed. And a split second later, Cassandra’s skull was rattled savagely by the most accurate Brazilian kick thrown by any human being.

            They’d been going at it for over fifteen minutes now, and despite being literally inside a cage, it was the audience who’d become the real captives. From the most casual observer to the veteran fighters, everyone in attendance was enraptured with the way Shiva and Cassandra used the fight as a canvas, each one expressing their passion and willpower through their fists in ways that defied belief, taking their opponent into worlds of their making. In the opening minutes, Shiva roused up the crowd with a dazzling array of traditional Chinese martial arts, including centuries-old animal forms from both North and South, which she applied with dazzling speed and purity of intent. A group of older mainlanders applauded earnestly when she parried one of Cassandra’s whipping jabs and delivered a flurry of impossible to follow Mantis Boxing blows through, across and around her arms, each one finding their mark and punching short gasps out of her daughter’s dry throat. Shiva’s skill was so unquestionable, no-one cried foul when Cassandra finally crumpled to the ground in the first knockdown of the fight. But everyone, even those who had firmly taken her mother’s side, cheered as she pulled herself up.

            Maintaining her focus despite Shiva’s initial advantage, Cassandra had countered her forms with more modern, straightforward and direct attacks, closer to what she’d had to fight in the cage. Eventually, through equal amounts of tenacity and precision, she forced her mother to shorten her forms and tighten her stance, effectively dragging her into Cassandra’s newfound world. The strategy paid off when she managed to crack Shiva’s jaw with a stiff uppercut, smashing her teeth together and forcing her to take what felt like her first step back in the fight. Wasting no time, Cassandra capitalized with short, stabbing hooks and straights to her mother’s body, keeping her close while beating the air out of her. Shiva eventually grew tired of being hounded like this and, before she could be further cornered, jabbed Cassandra’s guard open with a stinging fist to the face and continued it with a huge, swinging right hook that reached her daughter’s cheek easily. Too easily.

            Shiva only saw an inch of Cassandra’s smile as she rolled with the punch and then twirled her lithe body around, transferring the momentum into a tremendous back roundhouse kick that caught her square on the jaw. And between her daughter’s strength and her own inertia from the hook, Shiva suddenly found herself spiraling in the air before crashing down face first into the mat with a triumphant thud.

            Dizzy but still standing, Cassandra backed off towards the thundering roar of cheers that erupted behind her, feeling suddenly adrift in a warm sea of pure sound. A tingling sensation rose quickly from her foot all the way through her leg towards her center, and some inches below it as well. Seeing her mother lying there, face down, her naked thighs and ample hips in full display, her impeccable back and arm muscles slowly springing back to life as she began the climb back up, kept Cassandra’s heart pumping frantically. Once she was back to full height, Shiva cracked her neck a couple of times with sensuously menacing motions that sent shivers, not exactly of fear, down her daughter’s spine. Had they been alone, Cassandra reckoned her fingers would already be inside her, pleasuring herself to such a sublime vision. As it was, she just hoped the wetness that had begun to flow from between her legs could be mistaken for sweat.

            With the rhythm of the fight established, the two traded blows and knockdowns for a quarter of an hour. Accepting Cassandra’s unspoken challenge, Shiva switched to more modern stances and strikes, and quickly proved to be just as comfortable with them as she was with ancient techniques. That was what the fortunate few who got to see her in action and live rarely seemed to get about Lady Shiva. She knew very well the risks of stagnation, of remaining fixed on one technique, on one style, on a singular set of traditions, and so she strove to learn from all forms of combat. She’d covered the walls of Nepalese temples with the blood of centuries-old martial lineages and thrashed biker bars in Hub City with the same intensity. The only styles she didn’t use were the ones that had no use at all. She effortlessly flowed from Shaolin boxing to Muay Thai knees to Jiu-Jitsu grapples, and Cassandra found herself on the receiving end of all of them. Which was just where she wanted to be, if she was being honest. When Shiva’s impossible kick cracked her daughter’s jaw, they were tied with three knockdowns each, although Cassandra figured that would soon change.

            Staggering in pain, Cassandra tried to put some distance between her and her mother, but her legs were not responding and the few steps she managed were clumsy and small. Shiva didn’t waste a second, and immediately tagged Cassandra with a left cross to the head that bent her forward and very nearly dropped her. She stayed on her feet, and got a savage knee to the gut for her troubles, as Shiva grabbed her from the neck and waistband like a bouncer about to throw a rowdy drunkard out. Now completely out of breath, Cassandra could do nothing but hang limply from her mother’s twin iron grips as Shiva launched more and more knees into her battered abs and aching chest, until she could no longer tense her muscles to defend herself. Sensing weakness, Shiva took a small step back and then thrust her entire body up, channeling all her energy into one last, devastating flying knee that lifted her daughter right off her feet.

            “Guaaahh!” Cassandra cried out as she covered the mat in more drool, tears and blood. She saw the drops turn into dark spots that were moving in closer, but through the choking pain, Cassandra realized she wasn’t falling as fast as she should. Shiva still had her hands on her, for some nefarious purpose no doubt, and Cassandra saw it for the opportunity it was. Leaning on the relative stability provided by her mother’s claw fingers and taking a sharp, deep breath that felt like daggers inside her lungs, Cassandra turned on her knees as they hit the ground and lunged at her mother’s hips. The tackle not only made Shiva release her grip but also lose her footing, and soon enough, mother and daughter were both falling to the ground in a tangled mess of bruised flesh, aching bones and sweaty skin.

            Once they finally came crashing down on the mat with a wet thump, Cassandra took a second to figure out their new positions and devise a plan, but that turned out to be a second too long. Something long and warm wrapped itself around Cassandra’s neck like a tentacle, and before she knew it, Shiva had locked a guillotine choke around her. Panicking, she tried to take another breath, but her mother’s arm stiffened, her rippling forearm pressing deep into her daughter’s throat, and Cassandra’s lungs only got half the air they needed. Meanwhile, further down her now oxygen-deprived body, Cassandra felt Shiva’s legs tying up her midsection, completing the hold before she even knew she was in it.

            On her knees and elbows, panting like a tired dog, with her eyes bulging out and her butt thrust up in the sky, Cassandra became painfully aware of her humiliation. Surrounded by people who’d watched her take on anything, who’d been amazed at her skill and thrilled by her silent determination, she was now inches away from tapping out or falling unconscious, and thinking about the two fanned the flames of her arousal. She wondered which would be the most shameful way of shattering the image of invincibility she’d built around her. Would it break more hearts to see her submit or get choked out? Would the sight of a crushed spirit be more disappointing than a broken body? They were both equally delectable to Cassandra, and in a way she’d already tasted them before at the hands of her mother. But now, there was the small, worrying thought that either way, the fight would be over. And that would be the real shame.

            “You only have a few seconds of air left, daughter,” Shiva suddenly taunted her in a breathy whisper. “You may use them to feebly try to fight your way out of my hold before passing out, or to cry out your submission. The result will be the same.”

            The cold, calculated cruelty of Shiva’s words combined with the warmth that radiated from her perfect body as it coiled around her daughter’s increasingly numb frame erased all thought from Cassandra’s mind and turned her on more than anything she’d ever experienced since arriving in the city. Despite sweating intensely out of nearly every pore, no part of her anatomy was wetter than the inside of her shorts. Cassandra wanted nothing more than to let go, to give in and be dominated into unconsciousness, but realized that wouldn’t take long unless she tried to fight back. Blindly, she began dropping punches on Shiva’s taut chest and abs, but she found it about as useful as banging on the walls of a castle with her bare hands. Even less so, perhaps, since every new blow only sapped her already minuscule reserves of strength even further. Savoring her powerless agony with lustful glee, Cassandra figured there was only one way her current situation could be even more exciting… and that gave her an idea of how to get out of it.

            Turning her closed fist into an open hand, Cassandra groped around Shiva’s half-naked body with hurried intent. Her mother smirked as she found one of her breasts and squeezed it lightly. She was about to make a taunting coo at her daughter’s sudden change of interests, when Cassandra’s hand went a bit lower and two of her fingers began prodding and caressing Shiva’s gleaming skin, sending tiny ripples into her muscles as they looked for something.

            Shiva immediately let go of the chokehold and rolled away from her daughter half a second before she could find her pressure point. Down on one knee, sporting an excited smile, she watched Cassandra cough loudly as she forced fresh air into her heaving chest.

            “You may consider me impressed,” Shiva said. “The lengths you are willing to go… And in front of your adoring public, too. But you understand, of course, that I now feel obliged to pay you back.”

            “You’re,” Cassandra answered, between coughs, “welcome… to try.”

            Shiva knew she was welcome to far more than try, and started bouncing lightly on her feet, loosening her arms. In a daze, Cassandra found her blurry eyes focusing on the way her mother’s breasts went up and down with an almost hypnotic quality, and had to make a conscious effort to keep her tongue inside her mouth. Nothing she could do about the drool leaking off the corners of her lips, however, save brush it off with a flick of her hand. Which Shiva took as a sign that she was ready to continue.

            Dialing up the aggression, Shiva went head-hunting. First with a series of boxing jabs that were far faster than Cassandra could handle, at least in her current state. And once her failing defenses were probed, Shiva began systematically breaking them down. Stiff shin kicks struck at Cassandra’s increasingly shaky thighs. Massive straight punches pierced through the holes in her defense, smashing her face in again and again. The blows were coming from all sides and nowhere, belonging to all styles and no style, dominating Cassandra and quickly reducing her to a punch-drunk mess. Desperate to get some breathing room, she tried swinging for the fences with wild hooks, but Shiva’s defense and offense had fused into one as she effortlessly parried and countered her moves in one motion with punishing efficiency. As a straight right pummeled her plexus and two lightning fast hooks snapped her head from side to side, Cassandra finally recognized the style, not by its form, for it has no form, but by the purity and simplicity of its spirit. Lady Shiva had broken out the Intercepting Fist. And now there was no escape.

            Doubling over slightly, Cassandra’s chin was caught by a flash uppercut that sent her crashing into the cage wall. The impact stunned her hard enough to make her arms drop uselessly to her sides, and Shiva took great delight in pounding her like a sandbag. A hard rain of stiff punches pummeled her daughter’s scarred body, piling up bruises over bruises and overwhelming her with pain. Her head was spared for now, all the better for the silent audience to witness the pitiful expression on their once invincible champion as she whimpered with every new hit. She wished she could see them, to see the impotent despair they both shared, but she was too busy. Not just trying to stay conscious, but savoring every punch with lewd expectation, waiting impatiently for the one she knew was coming. Her nipples hardened even as her mother crushed her breasts, and her crotch was now wet enough that Cassandra’s hands shakily moved to cover it, the tip of her fingers hovering dangerously close to the bottom end of her pubis. The temptation to just start masturbating to the perfect beat down she was receiving came back with a vengeance, and it took all of her remaining energy to keep it controlled with the promise of even deeper, darker pleasures to come.

            With her daughter soundly beaten to a sobbing, boneless heap of battered flesh, Shiva put one of Cassandra’s arms over her shoulders and let her lean onto her, supporting her mangled frame and keeping it away from the slick mat. Cassandra watched her mother’s fist slowly come into her dazed view, with drops of dull red dotting her padded knuckles. She knew whose blood that was, and the sweet smell of leather combined with the copper taste that overflowed her mouth made her moan with damp excitement. This was it, she figured. But she figured wrong. Instead of triggering her nerve cluster, Shiva threw three nauseatingly cruel uppercuts into Cassandra’s already wrecked midsection. Her abs, mute and unresponsive, gave way immediately as the progressively powerful punches rammed through skin, muscle and organs. Cassandra’s eyes rolled up and her tongue lolled out as she abandoned all semblance of dignity. The last punch lifted her clean off her feet and sent her entire body into a numb shock. Had there been a fourth, Cassandra imagined, it probably would’ve punched right through her body and come out her back.

            Instead, her mother simply backed off a little and allowed Cassandra to finally begin falling to the ground. The world had gone black around her, and all Cassandra could feel other than the constant pain that coursed freely through her destroyed body was a deep sense of sadness. For whatever reason, it seemed as her mother had judged her unworthy of receiving her Heavenly Fist. Was it something she’d done? Was Shiva worried about its effects on her? Or had she simply grown bored with her daughter’s mad hunger for pleasure? Cassandra prepared to fall into the void that was calling to her. Maybe there, in that endless emptiness, she’d find some answers.

            Outside the void, back inside the cage, Shiva waited. The crowd had been shocked into silence, with even its most bloodthirsty members traumatized by the monstrous violence she’d visited upon their home star. Holding their breaths, they waited for Cassandra to fall, to crash down to the mat for what was sure to be the last time. And so did Shiva. But before her daughter’s trembling knees could even touch the ground, and with a motion that was too fast for veteran and rookie eyes alike, Shiva reached in and grabbed Cassandra’s hair, pulling her in close. She lifted her arm and cocked back one leg, making Cassandra look like a mouse in the jaws of a tigress, and everyone in the club held one long, horrified breath.

            With the savage strength and speed of a lightning bolt striking the earth, Lady Shiva elbowed her daughter in the back as she kneed her in the chest, ruthlessly catching her between two demolishing blows. In the edges of the void, Cassandra was brutally pulled back to reality by a thunderous orgasm that raged through every fiber of her being. Shiva had struck both of her pressure points at the exact same time. And the results were as immediate as they were blissful.

            There was no wave of pleasure here. No slow conversion of her twisted nerves. This was more of an explosion of ecstasy going off inside her loins, setting her body on fire. On her knees and arms, curled up like a babe, Cassandra felt hotter than ever, each aftershock feeling like an entirely new orgasm on its own. She desperately tried to claw out her clothes, to get rid of the damned fabric that choked her like a straitjacket, but her arms simply hung there, twitching uncontrollably at the overwhelming joy. She was out of her mind, the shame and fear and excitement all gone away, pushed out by this all-encompassing pleasure. She just kept coming, and coming, and coming. Her tears rolled down into the warm mat where the scent of sweat and blood watered the corners of Cassandra’s dry mouth, her quivering tongue licking the wet patches as if they were her mother’s skin. It was an obscene spectacle that nobody but Shiva could really see, since none of this was immediately apparent to the devastated crowd. All they could see was Cassandra turned into a twitching ball of ravaged flesh. All they could tell was that the fight was over.

            With his heart in his throat, Liu moved closer to the referee, who’d long since left the cage and was waiting on the safe side of the door. But fear had nestled deep inside both of their hearts, and so they waited for someone else to decide when exactly they could go in. Namely, they waited for Shiva. It wasn’t just Cassandra’s spirit she had trampled to a pulp. Everyone else who’d witnessed the fight now felt equally subjugated to Lady Shiva’s iron will. So when Cassandra finally stopped twitching and put her hands on the mat to try and push herself back up, the audience’s collective blood ran cold. Even her staunchest supporters would rather have seen Cassandra stay down and give up before it was too late, but no-one could find the strength to say it and risk the consequences. And so, they all just stood there in tense silence as Shiva pulled Cassandra’s head up by her hair until she was kneeling upright, let her go, and then caught her by the chin before she could fall back down, like a puppeteer inspecting a busted up doll.

            “Will you yield now,” Shiva asked, staring right into Cassandra’s crystallized eyes, “or shall I end you?”

            There was no answer from her daughter. At least, not a verbal one. Cassandra felt like the words had been beaten out of her once again, swept away by the mind-numbing pleasure that ran unchecked through her meridians. Instead, she opened her arms as wide as she could and tried to focus her eyes on the second of the three Shivas she was seeing, hoping that’d be answer enough.

            The sharp cross that smashed her cheek let her know it was. Five more blows snapped her head around, each one setting off a blast of bliss across her face, until she stopped counting. Her legs trembled in sync with each punch, spreading further and further until she could feel her drenched labia pressed against the mats. She felt as low as she could get, and her twitching hips made her rub her sex on the damp floor, sending a delectable thrill directly to her brain that only wished to deepen. With all eyes fixated on the severe mangling her face was getting, nobody noticed Cassandra’s right hand moving between her legs, nor her fingers making tiny circles through her shorts on a particular spot.

            Soon enough, Cassandra’s rattled brain went completely blank and her body stiffened in preparation for her next climax. Seeing her daughter suddenly go rigid, Shiva stopped her punches and gave Cassandra enough room to get some air. And when her daughter’s toes curled up and her moans choked inside her throat, Shiva cracked a callous smile and fired a devastating Muay Thai knee right into Cassandra’s slacked chin.

            A bloody cloud of spit erupted from Cassandra’s open mouth as she flew backwards, her head cranked back as far as it could go and her back arcing in an impressive curve. Her knees were still on the ground, but at the height of her fall, her second orgasm finally hit her, splaying her legs and numbing the rest of her body. She ended up flat on her back, spread eagled and quivering madly, wholly overwhelmed by the violent climax. Her eyes were almost completely blank as she lay boneless on the mat, drool and sweat and juices leaking from her utterly ruined body like her life was ebbing away from it. And that wasn’t far from the truth.

            Inside, Cassandra was drowning in ecstasy. The fight had been everything she’d ever wanted and more, quenching her lewd thirst for punishment while awakening even more pleasures that had laid dormant for who knew how long. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat had merged into one, into the sheer joy of fighting, as she went from an invincible fighter who conquered all to a humiliated little girl savagely beaten to a bloody, sweaty pulp in less than half an hour. She felt like she was still coming, trapped in a never-ending heavenly bliss from which she could not escape and had no reason to anyway. So strong was the pleasure that Cassandra didn’t even notice when it started to fade, when the white light grew dark and eventually completely black, and when her last bits of consciousness evaporated into nothing.

            She’d felt this before. She knew what it was. She was dying. But it was alright.

* * *

 

            Liu had never felt horror like this in his entire life. Sure, some of the fights in his club occasionally got out of hand and certain nasty feuds had ended with a visit to the hospital, but this… this was too much. Lady Shiva had killed her. She’d literally beaten her to death, murdered the young, unbeatable little girl with the thousand scars, and was now pulling her lifeless form up by her drenched top like she was trying to find one last spark to snuff out. Somehow she seemed to find it, and without letting go, pulled back her blood-splattered fist with sadistic delight.

            He’d liked Kane, and he had allowed the fight to continue uninterrupted out of respect for her fighting spirit (or at least that’s what he’d told himself), but now it was over and so was her life. Even in death, she didn’t deserve any further torture. Pushing his way past the frozen referee, Liu swung the cage door open and jumped in, clenching his fists until they hurt, and cried out as loudly as his choked throat and cracked voice would let him.

            “ _Stop!_ Stop, just stop! She’s already dead!”

            Shiva turned her head to look at him, and Liu felt himself shrinking to the size of an insect as he stared into those eyes of hers, eyes that could devastate a soul as thoroughly as her fists destroyed bodies. Without letting go of Cassandra, she sneered at Liu, freezing him in place.

            “Of course she is, you imbecile,” Shiva spat out. “Now be quiet,” she added, and turned back to her daughter.

            Liu never saw the punch happen. There was a blur of motion from Shiva’s shoulder and a sharp, meaty sound that echoed through the silent basement, and for a moment he could’ve sworn there was a weak white light coming from the dead girl’s chest. And while he was still struggling to process what had just happened, he heard a coarse coughing noise and saw Kane rudely twitch back to life, like a kid waking up from a bad dream. It was a miracle. A pure miracle. And it drained all courage from his body.

            Paying no heed to the club owner as he fell flat on his butt, Shiva picked her moaning daughter up in her arms like she’d lost all weight, and carried her out of the cage, down the stairs and through the parting crowd. And as she walked past the slack-jawed, dumbfounded, and just plain terrified patrons, the most aware among them could swear she was softly humming [a song in Cantonese](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyKQAAFmf-8) into her defeated opponent’s ear.

* * *

 

            She was still singing it when Cassandra finally regained consciousness, her head resting on her mother’s lap as she caressed her tired limbs, carefully helping blood and air flow back into her body. The song was warm and beautiful and enthralling, a golden string that tied the two women together, letting Cassandra float in that bright place between places but anchoring her to the world they both shared. And even when Shiva spoke, its music still filled Cassandra’s mind like a cherished memory.

            “We do not exist in the past, or in the future. All beings exist solely in the present, in this single moment in time. We embrace the moment, trust it to provide for us, feed off its energies, and allow it to push us forward on our path. We do not resist it. We do not force it. We accept it, as we accept our place in it.”

            Her mother’s long fingers brushed Cassandra’s wet hair as she nuzzled in closer, rubbing her cheek against her thighs and sighing dreamily.

            “In some moments, we are perfect. In others, we are vulnerable. And in others still, we are defeated. But through it all, we remain. You remain, Cassandra. You are always you. And I--”

            The locker room door creaked open, rudely catching Shiva’s attention. Through the widening crack, Liu appeared, with two bouncers by his side brandishing meat cleavers borrowed from the kitchen. Shiva let the door swing freely before looking at Liu’s trembling eyes, and then crossed her lips with her index finger, shushing the men away.

            An intense sense of shame invaded their hearts as they took in the bizarre scene, the vision of the young scarred fighter cuddled up to the woman who had killed her, and for some reason, all three suddenly found themselves thinking about their mothers. Deflated, Liu and his helpers turned around and closed the door slowly, taking immense care to keep it from creaking again.

            Shiva smiled to herself and turned back to Cassandra, but it was too late. Her daughter had drifted peacefully away once more, the lingering melody of her mother’s song having rocked her to sleep like gentle waves carrying a boat down river to the vast, endless sea. And together, the two women sailed towards peace.


End file.
